Erosion

There is another process shaping these islands
where you have to begin with a stretch (as in
that’s a stretch), and New England was once
much bigger, the tropics had much more water,
but the water doesn’t sunder the land from itself,
is stormless and without any power. All it can do
is hug these islands and coasts and sometimes
change color as it listens only to this other
thing at work, arranging and arranging,
all the while building theories of synecdoche
for dock, breaker, beach that seem to split the shore.
That breeze that fills your sail and carries you.
Those docks where the other boats moor.
These sentences from deep inside the other
thing that carry you past the shore.